To D.c. From Yorktown

Her hand-painted ornament is located on the west bottom of the 18-foot Fraser fir in the Blue Room of the White House this year. For local artist Nancy Thomas, this time around was more laid back.

The first time she was asked to create decorations for the White House during the holidays was during the Reagan administration in 1981.

"I got a phone call at 7 p.m. and the person on the other end said, 'This is the White House,'" she said at her home in historic Yorktown. Of course, she thought it was a joke and the person on the other end just laughed because everyone they call thinks it's a joke at first. She and seven other artists had been recommended by the Museum of Folk Art in New York to create 150 ornaments each that year.

"But if they'd asked me to do 1,000 I would've said, 'OK,'" she laughed.

This year, the theme is "Holiday in the National Parks" to celebrate the approaching centennial of the National Park Service in 2016. Thomas' ornament features images of colonial Jamestown and Yorktown for Colonial National Park. A friend from the park service saw her on the Fourth of July and casually asked her to make the ornament. "I felt so honored and another thing I felt is it makes me very proud that our country has preserved these wonderful parks throughout the land," she said.

Coming up with what to put on the ornament ended up being fairly easy.

Fortunately, she'd created a Fourth of July poster featuring her primitivist style with paintings of George Washington, Pocahontas, the Godspeed, Gowan Pamphlet and John Rolfe. Those personalities and cultural images illustrated the local park well. She took the gold-colored orb, painted it black, sketched her figures with white paint and painted everything else in.

There are a total of 350 ornaments on the official White House Christmas Tree, designed by artists at U.S. national parks, memorials, seashores, monuments and historic sights. The other decorations, including 862 feet of garland, also reflect the nation from coast to coast to go with the theme.

"The national parks are represented all over the White House, from the east entrance, when you're greeted with Cape Hatteras Lighthouse from North Carolina," first lady Laura Bush said during a preview tour of the decorations. "You walk on in, you see the fabulous gold leaves of the aspens from the Appalachian Trail. ... When you come upstairs in the Cross Hall, you're met with that very famous Statue of Liberty."

There are paintings of Hopi Point in Arizona's Grand Canyon National Park and a waterfall rushing into the Virgin River in Utah's Zion National Park. Downstairs, a terra cotta model of Mount Rushmore sits under a portrait of former first lady Barbara Bush.

Photos that normally hang in the East Wing have been replaced with photos of presidents visiting national parks. There's President Eisenhower walking out of Lincoln's birthplace in Kentucky in 1954 and President Kennedy visiting the Liberty Bell in the 1960s.

There will be an estimated 60,000 people touring the White House during the holidays and about one-third of the visitors will be tasting the 20,000 Christmas cookies, 700 assorted holiday cakes, 600 pounds of asparagus and 320 gallons of eggnog.

At the far end of the State Dining Room sits the traditional gingerbread house, a replica of the White House built with gingerbread and more than 300 pounds of white chocolate.

"The animals who are around the base of the gingerbread are animals that you might see if you visit some of our national parks," Laura Bush said. "We have foxes and special sheep that we would see if we were in Alaska, bears, coyote."

She noted the miniature replicas of the Bushes' dogs Barney and Miss Beazley that are seated in a sleigh atop the White House. "Kitty will be joining them soon, as soon as (White House executive pastry chef) Bill makes a kitty to go there," she said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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